Chapter Forty Seven

Sabotage

MELODY

All was quiet on the plot of land that Fort Kroxendal was built on. At least, for the moment. At the edge of a forest hundreds of yards away from the fort, a portal of purple mist opened and three girls stepped out of it. Fortunately, the light pollution wouldn't be visible at such a long distance by the soldiers patrolling the fort.

"Here we are." Melody fished out and unfolded a large map from her pocket and glanced at it for confirmation.

"If this is your idea of a supply base, then you're sorely mistaken, Princess." Tracy swatted at a couple of flies, facing the interior of the forest.

"Not the forest. There." Melody pointed her in the right direction. "Fort Kroxendal."

"And how exactly did you know about this place?" Jade scratched her head.

"As a kid I was cooped up in the castle and not allowed to go out to the sea to play." Melody shrugged. "So I spent a lot of time looking at the big maps hanging in my dad's study. It got to a point where I memorised those terrains by heart."

"And conveniently you remembered this place." Jade chortled.

"Yeah." Melody admitted. "It's kind of hard to forget."

Fort Kroxendal had been around for centuries, Melody recalled. It was used in various wars, particularly the one between her kingdom and Talswurth. This place had been a hot spot in between both armies, and the two sides had wasted blood and firepower wrestling for control over this fort to be used as a supply base in the middle of their war. Eventually, Talswurth had won and advanced further towards Denmark.

That was when a brilliant General by the name of Nohr had come up with the idea of sending a battalion to flank and sabotage the fort while a battle was being fought miles from it, and it resulted in the first costly mistake of Talswurth, which would eventually cause them to lose the war.

Melody had decided that Nohr's fantastic plan was inspiring enough to be used as her own strategy. Of course, she didn't have a battalion to back her up. Only two other girls and a new compound bow in her hand, which hopefully were all she needed.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Tracy shifted her weight from foot to foot. "There's only three of us, and I'm willing to bet that the fort is heavily surrounded."

Melody produced a spyglass from her jacket pocket. She had nicked it from the Insurgency's new supplies which had first come from the Imperial Horde's cache. It was only fitting that their own equipment was going to play a part in their eventual downfall.

She levelled it to her eye and closed the other. Hundreds of yards away from where she was standing, she could see soldiers clad in muddy red uniforms patrolling the walls of Fort Kroxendal in threes, and every time one detail rounded the corner, another trio would show up to take its place. It was a well-oiled mechanism that General Kane had put in place to protect his base, though in all honesty he didn't really need it.

The walls of the fortress were roughly forty feet tall by her judgement, and who knew how thick they were? It would be impossible to climb or infiltrate, and Kane was better off putting his manpower to better use inside the base. But it was not like he was short on soldiers, for he had tens of thousands camped somewhere out in the Kreshein Forest on their campaign towards Arendelle.

"You're right, Tracy. I see sentries. Moving in threes at a time." Melody relayed the information to Tracy and Jade who didn't have spyglasses. "Constant rotation around the walls, each face is never left unguarded, judging by the pace of their prowling."

Tracy shrugged. "Looks like Kane's paranoid."

"He doesn't have to be. The walls are forty feet tall. There's no way we can get in there."

"That's why it's called a fortress." Jade said humorously.

Melody sighed and lowered the spyglass. "Haven't you worked with me long enough to know that I have a plan to get inside?"

"Still," Tracy said. "It's just the three of us against who knows how many? And what if General Kane is in there with them too?"

"No, he'll be in the main camp at the heart of the march." Melody said. "He won't be wasting his time in the supply base when he can have his junior officers run things."

"So how do you plan on getting inside?" Jade asked. "Like you said, the walls are forty feet."

"We could always teleport in." Tracy suggested.

Melody shook her head. "I wish, but it's too risky. We don't know how the base is structured and we don't have the schematics. We might as well be running straight into the Imperial Horde."

"Then what do you propose?" Tracy gestured at the open space outside the forest. "There's a few hundred yards of nothing but open fields between us and the fort. We'll be spotted from far off."

"We won't be spotted if…" Melody glanced at the grass.

"Woah, wait, no, no, no. You can't be serious." Tracy raised both hands defensively. "Melody, please tell me you're joking."

Melody looked at the dismayed faces of her two companions and pursed her lips.

###

Three hundred and fifty yards. That was the distance they'd crossed, which took them what seemed like hours. By the time they'd gotten within fifty feet of Fort Kroxendal, their clothes and skin were caked in mud, bits of grass and excrement from whatever animals had passed through the field.

The weather was in their favour though, if nothing else. The moon was hidden behind clouds most of the time, which did the job of concealing the three Warriors from sight as they leopard-crawled through the open field. Melody was very sure that any sentry wouldn't have been able to spot three girls leopard-crawling through the grass even if they were ten yards away.

It also helped that the grass - and weeds - were tall and wild. After all, no one ever tended to the fields so far away from civilization. They were tall and dense enough to hide the three girls, who practically had their chins just inches from the ground anyway.

Where they were, one face of the fort's walls loomed large above them, and Melody could estimate from her position that it spanned at least a hundred yards wide. That would give them…enough time, judging by the pace that the sentries were moving at. At that precise moment, a trio of sentries were just about to round the corner, and Melody knew that another three would show up to take their place.

"Get ready." Melody said, her eyes following the soldiers like an eagle stalking its prey. Quickly, she removed the lightweight contraption from her jacket pocket, and jerked it forward. The contraption uncurled to its full glory, becoming the compound bow that she had gratefully accepted as a parting gift from Hiro.

"Woah, is that your new bow?" Jade whispered, staring at the weapon in awe with a slight hint of jealousy.

"Mm hmm." Melody tried to downplay her response, even though she was just as proud of her new bow. She held it low, gripping it at an angle parallel to the ground. "Remember the plan, like we discussed."

"Sure. What other wonderful ideas you got up your sleeve?" Tracy said sarcastically with her dreadlocks caked in mud.

"Not many left." Melody reached for a cluster of three arrows, and nocked them. She drew back the bow and immediately felt the ease and speed at which she could draw back the bowstring. This thing was a powerhouse. A nanosecond after she had nocked and drawn them back, she released the arrows and they flew with such velocity and power that felt remarkably different from any power her previous bows had given her.

The three arrows found their targets and the trio of sentries collapsed silently out of sight of the next three sentries who were coming around the other corner to take their place. Melody repeated the process with these three, making sure they were out of sight from the other sentries who were prowling the other faces of the walls.

When all six sentries were down, Melody sprung from her spot in the grass and dashed for the wall. That was the signal for the others to leave their cover, and they followed suit closely behind. Seven, eight, nine. Melody reached for a grappling arrow as she sprinted, maintaining her pace as she nocked the arrow and aimed for the top of the wall.

She aimed for a second as she continued running, adjusting her trajectory as she went along, and then she let fly. The grappling arrow soared, and then anchored itself to the top of the wall, biting deep into the stone and locking its jaws. To test its strength, Melody tugged on her bow, which had a cable attached to the arrow and found that it would hold her weight.

With a jerk of her hand, the cable began to recoil itself, hoisting her into the air as she hung tight to the bow. In a matter of seconds, she had scaled the wall, and clung to it, holding back from vaulting over for the time being. She peered over the top of the wall, and saw that it wasn't a sheer drop on the other side. In fact, there was a stone walkway, and the top of the wall acted as a sort of parapet for the fort's defenders to rest their weapons.

Fortunately, this section of the wall was empty for now, as Kane had most likely not anticipated his supply base being ambushed and sabotaged. He was going to learn how wrong he was.

Melody vaulted over the wall, and then made a few quick modifications to her new bow and the grappling arrow. The cable uncoiled again, and she sent the bow down to Jade and Tracy who had already arrived at the base of the wall.

One by one, they ascended the wall the same way she did, and when they were safely over on the other side, the three Warriors crouched to avoid potentially getting spotted by any of the soldiers patrolling the interior of the fort.

Melody glanced below at the interior of the fortress. The ground level had an open space the size of a parade ground which was covered almost entirely by storage crates and trunks of all sizes and heights. All of them were packed together tightly and inventoried neatly by type, with huge columns of space in between each cluster for the soldiers to walk.

On all four sides of the open space, there were openings between the thick pillars which led to different parts of the large fortress. However by the looks of it, it could be assumed that the bulk of the Imperial Horde's supplies were gathered in the open storage area.

On the second level of the fortress, Melody could see soldiers patrolling while watching over the grounds. However to their advantage, security was slightly more lax on the inside, and there were only two soldiers posed on opposite sides, overlooking the parapet with long-barrelled rifles in their hands.

"Snipers." Melody said in a low voice, and subtly gestured in their direction so that she wouldn't happen to attract any unwanted attention. "On the level just below us."

"I see them." Tracy said, and Jade nodded. "What's our play here?"

"To be honest, I only have a vague idea of what needs to happen here." Melody admitted. This wasn't one of her better laid plans, as there had been no time to properly plan out every detail.

"Which is?"

"Like I told you. We just need to destroy the supplies." Melody replied, her voice still low. "We don't have an army behind us now, so we have to improvise. I'm thinking…" she glanced at the far corner of the ground level, which had barrels of a certain liquid lined up in neat rows, and some were stacked on top of each other to make more space.

Jade followed her gaze and her eyes grew wide when they rested on the barrels.

"Are you sure this is how you wanna play this?" Jade turned to Melody. "There's no guarantee that-"

"I know. It's a long shot, but we just have to work with what we have." Melody pursed her lips.

"Those are barrels of oil, or am I seeing things?" Tracy squinted.

"Yes."

Tracy and Jade exchanged curious glances.

"I hope you know what you're doing." Jade said.

"I hope so too." Melody gripped her bow in one hand and began walking towards the corner where two sides of the walls met. There was a spiral staircase leading down to the second level, where the snipers were positioned.

"We have to synchronise our attacks at the same time," Melody cautioned as they stopped at the landing, hidden behind a separate wall which obscured them from sight. "If one goes down before the other, the second man will see him from the opposite side and if reinforcements come, it's game over for us."

"What, you don't think the three of us can take on the Imperial Horde?" Tracy joked.

"Not in here at least. Too little space to manouevre."

"Tracy and I will take the one further from us." Jade suggested. "You can take the nearest one."

"Alright. Try not to use your powers unless you really need to. We don't want to attract unnecessary attention in here. If they box us in, we're finished." Melody gripped her bow. "Let's make this quick. I'll follow your signal."

Melody crouched and let Tracy and Deirdre move past her, half-walking and half-crawling towards the sniper on the far left. Meanwhile, on her own end, she stayed where she was but peeked out at the corridor. The sniper closest to her was directly ahead, with rifle in hand and attentively surveying the first level.

She nocked a single arrow which had its tip filled with a powerful sedative, and drew it back. Glancing over at where the other sniper was, she waited for her partners' signal. Then, Tracy grabbed the man's head from behind and covered his mouth and nose, while Jade dragged him to the ground.

The other sniper was immediately alerted to the commotion, but an arrow whizzed and embedded itself into his leg. Within a matter of seconds, the man collapsed to the ground without a noise.

Melody emerged from her cover, and walked out to where her target was, just to confirm, and found him completely unconscious and harmless. She looked over to where Tracy and Jade had ambushed their sniper, and saw them emerge from behind the parapet. Tracy gave her a thumbs up, and Melody returned one in response.

Placing her hands on the parapet, Melody scanned the ground level. As far as she could tell, there was no one in sight, and not a sound which would indicate the presence of any soldiers. The coast was clear…for now. Catching the eyes of Tracy and Jade, Melody nodded and leapt over the parapet.

She landed gingerly on the ground without so much as a noise, and glanced up at the second level, waiting for her companions to make the descent.

Then, a portal of purple mist opened up beside her, albeit it was silent and didn't emit any bright lights or colours. Tracy and Jade stepped out of the Crossing Point and the portal closed behind them.

"Didn't I say not to use your powers as far as possible?" Melody said in a low, annoyed tone.

Tracy shrugged. "Some of us can't land like a cat."

Melody shook her head and started walking through the columns of supplies. They passed by stacked rows of boxes containing military rations, hard crates storing bottles of wine and beer, and trunks housing reserve muskets and tons of lead balls and black powder.

Stopping beside boxes labelled with the words "black powder", Melody handed a couple to Jade and Tracy, who both looked confused, but accepted as many as they could carry.

"What are these for?" Tracy tucked two under her arms.

"I'll explain in a bit. Come on." Melody beckoned for them to follow her to the far corner where the barrels of oil were neatly arranged.

Now that she could get a closer look at the oil drums, she noticed that the barrels which had once been painted red were in rather bad condition, with most of the metal lids rusted over and the red paint faded or peeled off almost entirely.

She removed three arrows from her quiver and handed one each to Jade and Tracy. "Keep these with you for now. Wedge the sharp end underneath the hatch and pop it loose. The lids are rusted over, so you're going to have to use a lever to pry them open."

"And then we just pour oil over everything?" Jade asked.

"The black powder too?" Tracy said.

"Then set everything on fire, I'm guessing?"

Melody nodded.

"Would've been a whole lot easier if Deirdre was here."

"True, but back then I didn't know what we would find here in the fortress. It was a work in progress." She shrugged. "But I figured out something equivalent to Deirdre's presence." Melody tapped the oil drums. "We're going to want to maximize the damage done."

"Oh wow, and here I thought this was one of your worst plans ever. I stand corrected." Tracy laughed as quietly as she could. "This is brilliant. There's gonna be fireworks."

"Here's hoping. But we have to work quickly. There's no telling when a new detail will come to relieve our two friends up there from their duty," Melody reached out to the stacked row of oil barrels, and handed one down to Jade, who placed the boxes of black powder down so that she could carry the drum in both hands.

Tracy did the same, and they began forming a relatively short chain, with Melody passing a barrel to Tracy, who would in turn pass it to Jade, who would then place the barrel at a spot beside one of the many stacks of equipment, and this process went on for a while.

Once the entire grounds were surrounded by well-dispersed oil drums, there were hardly any left in the original corner where they had been taken from. The three girls then set about emptying their supply of black powder onto the various crates, boxes and trunks.

And when that was done, they used the arrows to pry open the lids of the barrels, and began sloshing the oil inside everywhere, being careful not to get any on their own clothes. By the time they were working their way through their fourth barrel, Melody's ears perked up as she heard footsteps approaching and voices getting increasingly louder from the opposite end of the open space. Someone was coming.

Author's Commentary:

The inspiration for this kind of stealth mission scenes come from my time gaming. I love the recent Tomb Raider trilogy games as well as the Batman Arkham games. They really served as inspirations for me to come up with the combat and stealth aspects of this book.

Let me know what you think and if I should do more of these kinds of scenes!